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Next up from Screened/ MCR is a documentary special and who else could we focus on but the grandfather of the form – Errol Morris!

From his incredible debut Gates of Heaven to the ground breaking Thin Blue Line (see Serial and Making a Murderer) to lending his credentials to Joshua Oppenheimer’s astonishing Act of Killing/Look of Silence Errol Morris has been at the forefront of the modern documentary.

We are thrilled on 31st May 2017 to be looking at his career, chosen form and a screening of his 2011 film Tabloid!

“Tabloid turns its attention to the outrageous and nearly unbelievable story of Joyce McKinney. A former Miss Wyoming beauty queen who gained a great deal of notoriety after being accused of kidnapping a young Mormon missionary, restraining him in chains and raping him in England in 1977. The unbalanced McKinney is interviewed extensively, particularly about her ambition to write a memoir telling her side of the tale.”

“By turns funny, strange, and disturbing, Tabloid is a vivid portrayal of a phenomenally driven woman whose romantic obsessions and delusions catapult her over the edge into scandal sheet notoriety and an unimaginable life”

Joining us on the night will be Martin Carter, Principal Lecturer in Film Studies from Sheffield Hallam University, who specialises in Documentary Film.…….who will take us on a tour de force of the history of the documentary as a genre and a detailed look at Errol Morris’ career and work!

"From the man himself....

The first films made and screened to the public were documentaries; the Lumiere Brothers’ actualites. These one-minute or less glimpses of life as we live it were there at the birth of cinema and documentary has followed the art form that is cinema by developing in line with technological advances such as sound and digital. Most of us have the means to record our lives as we live them with our smart phones and then place it online as a record, a document: we are now all documentarians. But documentary is taken for granted. We regard it as presenting the truth to us, but what is the truth and can it ever be captured and shown in a film?

In an attempt to pose and hopefully answer this question, I will present a brief examination of why you should never believe everything (or possibly anything) that you see in a documentary and how the camera often lies rather than provides the truth.